The poetry of Ibn Khafajah

the long version

This study is an attempt to identify and describe the distinctive features of the poetic style of the acclaimed medieval Andalusian poet Ibn Khafajah, who has been credited with starting a new school of poetry, in Andalus and elsewhere. It offers a close reading of his poetry, concentrating on the three basic elements of style - imagery, rhetorical devices, and structural patterns. It shows how Ibn Khafajah creatively uses the poetic tradition available to him to form new images and scenes, create multi-layered poems, and bestow different levels of unity and coherence on his poems. The study demonstrates some of the ways by which the various elements of style are combined, and interrelated, to produce original, meaningful, and highly moving poems in the Khafajian style.